Greens push for counsellors, not chaplains

THE Greens want to scrap the national school chaplaincy program and replace it with a scheme to help schools employ counsellors and community liaison officers.

Greens leader Bob Brown will announce the plan in a speech to a public education forum in Canberra today.

Senator Brown said the chaplaincy program, introduced by the Howard government in 2007, was ''a very old idea, very much short of meeting the needs of schools in 2010. It has a religious basis whereas we are wanting to fund the program according to the needs of students,'' he said.

The Rudd government said last year the program would continue until 2012 at a cost of $42.8 million.